Friday, October 16, 2009

Agreement

Yesterday was another difficult day. The woman from my team that I had spoken to the previous day phoned me and told me how utterly upset she was by the whole conversation (by the content rather than upset with me). She burst into tears on the phone and so I spent ages talking to her and trying to help her get what I had said into perspective. I managed to get her from a position of wanting to just walk away and never come back to agreeing to sit down with the other person and for them to communicate directly, which I do genuinely think will solve the problem.

I then had to speak to the other person (both of them work from home on a Thursday and Friday) and I couldn’t get in touch with her until about 4pm. She had seen how upset the other one was the previous day and had been upset by that and so we then talked about that for a while. She has agreed that they should talk to each other and hopes that they can clear the air. Now I have got them to the place of being willing to speak to each other, I shall step back and leave them to deal with it.

Anyway... I like the new PostSecret video (although it is slightly clichéd at the end). So I shall leave you to reflect on that.

4 comments:

Sarah said...

So not the best week you ever had? Who'd be a manager?!

It sounds like you handled the whole thing very tactfully, and addressed everyone's concerns impartially. What more could you do?

Hope you have a relaxing weekend!

Random Reflections said...

Sarah - no, not ideal... I really like everyone in my team, but they do sometimes say to me "we are quite dysfunctional aren't we" to which I try and offer words of comfort but then have to agree that they are certainly "challenging" at times.

At least they are willing to speak - and the one who was so upset phoned me yesterday and sounded totally fine (not that we discussed the previous day).

I have work to do this weekend because I have a big scary course to run next week!

Have a good weekend.

Kahless said...

I havent checked out Postsecret for ages; thanks for reminding me.

Random Reflections said...

Kahless - I like PostSecret and usually try and check it on a Sunday so that if I forget I then have the rest of the week to remember!